Netroots Nation Friday Post June 8, 2012

So this morning I attended the Morning News Dump. The story about Willard Mitt Romney’s having a Michigan troopers uniform and using it to pull over girls was the clear winner. It’ looking more and more like Mitt won’t be president. It’s becoming ever so much clearer that he’s an authoritarian moron.

Then at 10:30AM to 12:00PM I went to What Progressives Can Do to Stop the War on Public Education. That was a VERY interesting panel. Diane Ravitch was one of the participants.

The room was fairly packed. Lots of teachers and union members. That seems to be the core of Netroots Nation.

It was during the questions that the economic issue came up.

As I’ve posted before, put more money in the hands of the people through doubling the minimum wage, not taxing unemployment insurance, and government forgiving 75% of student loan debt. That would flush a ton more more money into the economy. Because poverty is the biggest indicator of educational success.

I’ll be hitting the Marriage Equality caucus in 553A at 3PM.

The Marriage Equality caucus was interesting. We had people from Maine where they’re trying to overturn a horrid amendment, Maryland where they’re trying to battle off an amendment, Washington State again trying to prevent an amendment and Minnesota trying to prevent and amendment.

Before the session started I was talking with a couple of the folks from Maine. I told them about the unusual situation in RI, where we had civil unions, and how the governor had signed and executive order recognizing ALL marriages performed outside Rhode Island. But that we couldn’t marry in RI and our legislature, headed by an openly gay man, couldn’t see fit to move a marriage equality through to a vote. I mentioned that RI was inviting a lawsuit and how to get a question on the ballot requires fairly extraordinary efforts.

Again the technology aspect came up and I’ve posted my thoughts on that in a prior post. They might get some surprises when they run their facebook friends against the Central Voter Registration Database.

I did note a couple of people from Marriage Equality RI in the group but they didn’t say anything.

***NOTE*** I see Flickr is only posting thumbnails jpgs now. I’m getting a tad sick of the games they’re playing. If you want to see full size images, just scroll down on the is page and click the Flickr photos. Oherwise click here to go directly to my photostream.